Tina Marie Phillips is a remarkable 70-year-old British woman whose life embodies courage, resilience, and authenticity. Her journey is extraordinary, not merely because she has undertaken what few dare to do, but because she has navigated her path with honesty, grace, and a unique sense of humor, even in the face of immense challenges. From her earliest days in post-war Britain to her transformative experiences as a transgender woman, Tina has consistently demonstrated an unwavering commitment to living truthfully. Her story spans continents and milestones: long and often arduous journeys to Thailand for gender-affirming surgeries, the physical and emotional highs and lows of recovery, and the everyday triumphs and struggles of fully embracing her identity. Through every stage, Tina has faced obstacles with remarkable fortitude, sharing her experiences in a way that is both educational and deeply personal, inspiring countless others to embrace their authentic selves.
Beyond her personal journey, Tina has been a pioneering voice in the transgender community online. She created the popular website Tina’s Transgender World, which became an essential resource for transgender individuals seeking guidance, reassurance, and community at a time when such spaces were scarce. Over the years, she has dedicated herself to documenting her life story, with her biography, From a Coal Miner to a Lady, promising to offer an intimate and powerful insight into her experiences. Tina’s influence extends beyond her own story. She has been an active advocate for transgender rights and awareness, organizing events and initiatives in Nottingham to support others in finding their voice and courage. Through her advocacy, storytelling, and sheer example, Tina Marie Phillips continues to illuminate the path for those navigating the challenges of gender identity, proving that living authentically is not only possible but transformative.
Monika: Tina, I want to start by sincerely thanking you. For many years, your website, Tina’s Transgender World, was an important space for trans women seeking guidance and reassurance. I still remember browsing the internet for information about SRS, and your site was one of the most helpful resources I found. When you set it up back in 2005, what did the project mean to you personally, and what led you to eventually close it in 2017?
Tina: Tina’s Transgender World was never meant to be anything grand or polished, it was simply my story. One person’s journey through years of gender dysphoria, confusion, pain, and eventually transition from male to female. Sometimes it’s incredibly hard to put feelings into words, especially feelings about who you truly are, and even harder to share them publicly on a website. But I felt it was important to try.
I started my transition at the age of 50, and by the time I closed the site in 2017, I was 60. That meant roughly ten years of living, learning, and growing through transition. My hope was always that someone reading my pages, especially someone standing at the very beginning of their journey, might realize that transition is achievable, even later in life, if it’s something you truly need.
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| Tina's website (2005-2017). |
Tina: The site documented so much of my life: my six trips to Thailand for surgery with Dr. Chettawut in Bangkok, the realities of recovery, and the emotional highs and lows that come with such life-changing experiences. But it also went beyond transition. I wrote about rebuilding my life after losing a 16-year career, and about starting again, creating businesses like Tina’s Transform Nails and Pink Butterfly Plants. Those were chapters of resilience, survival, and reinvention.
Eventually, I felt the website had done what it needed to do. My story was out there, and I had moved into a different phase of life. Transition, for me, is a lifelong journey, one I’ll be on until the day I die. Every new day still brings challenges, lessons, and growth. Closing the site wasn’t an ending, just another evolution. Love and light, that’s always been my message, and it still is.
Monika: How did the internet play a role in your transition journey?
Tina: At the end of 2004, I finally got my first computer, and I basically started stumbling around online. I tried out all sorts of websites, and it didn’t take long before I found exactly what I’d been searching for all my life. It was like everything I needed to know about transitioning was suddenly at my fingertips. I spent hundreds of hours reading, researching, and just absorbing information. Eventually, I even found companies that supplied antiandrogens and hormones. I could pay with a credit card, track the delivery, and know exactly when it would arrive in Nottingham. It felt surreal, like all my dreams had come true.
One of the things I loved most was reading other people’s transition stories, learning about their experiences with hormone regimens, the Real Life Test, referrals, everything. It was honestly like winning the lottery or having all my Christmases at once. Eventually, I started ordering hormones and antiandrogens from Thailand and gradually built up the dosage myself over weeks and months. It was empowering to finally feel like I was in control and moving forward with my life.
Monika: Did you have any support networks online while you were navigating your transition?
Tina: Yes, definitely! One of the things that really helped me was finding a chat room in the US called Adult Friend Finder. There was a specific room called the Gender Exchange Room, and that’s where I met someone I now call Big Sis, Michele. She’s a 62-year-old trans woman and an ex-Vietnam veteran living in Phoenix, Arizona. We quickly became very close friends. Over the months, she spent hours each day chatting with me on MSN Messenger, both before work and after, and honestly, that support was a huge strength for me during my transition. Michele runs a group called Transgender Outreach on Yahoo for trans people worldwide. I had tried starting my own trans group on Smart Groups, but it never really took off. Michele kindly built me a new group on Yahoo, called Transgender Links UK.
It grew quickly and became a safe haven for trans women, transvestites, and supporters from all over the world. Through it, I made friends and connections I never would have had otherwise. Even though I don’t own the group anymore, it’s still going strong, and I’ll always be grateful for that community.
Monika: Let’s switch to the very beginning. Your life story begins in post-war Britain, in a very specific place and time.
Tina: I was born in 1955, in Nottingham, the so-called Queen of the Midlands. I was an only child, and I grew up in a very large, old house in Old Basford with my parents, my grandparents, and an aunt all living under the same roof. It was crowded, noisy, and full of life. What really made our home unusual was the sheer number of animals we kept. We had geese, chickens, rabbits, canaries, and a couple of dogs.
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| At Arnot Hill Park in 2018. |
Looking back, it was almost like a private zoo. But there was nothing romantic about it at the time. We were quite poor, and the animals weren’t pets in the modern sense, they were there to help put food on the table. They supplemented what little we had, and every scrap mattered.
Monika: What was daily life like inside that house as a child?
Tina: The 1950s were a grey and grim time in many ways. People burned fossil fuels constantly, especially coal, and the air was thick with smoke and soot. There were millions of chimneys belching it out day and night. Just down the road from where I lived ran the railway line, and I can still clearly remember watching the coal trains rumble past, loaded to the brim from the Nottinghamshire coalfields.
My parents worked incredibly hard to earn what little they could. Because times were tough, you valued everything you owned. You looked after things, repaired them, reused them. It certainly wasn’t the throwaway society we live in now.
Monika: Do you have a particular memory that captures that era for you?
Tina: One of my clearest childhood memories is sitting for hours in my pushchair near the local crossings, waving at the trains as they trundled by, pulling dozens of wagons filled with coal. That coal powered the stations in the Trent Valley and, really, it powered the whole country. Everything seemed to depend on that black substance being dug hundreds of yards below the surface.
The smog was so thick you could almost taste it. The sky was grey, the buildings were grey, and everything was coated in soot from the chimneys. And yet, despite the shortages and the harsh conditions, people were happy in a way that feels rare today. They had survived a world war and come out the other side. There was pride, trust, friendship, and a sense of community that I feel we’ve largely lost in modern society. It wasn’t an easy time to grow up, but it shaped me. Those early years taught me resilience, appreciation, and the understanding that even in hardship, there can be warmth, connection, and hope.
Monika: When did you first start to feel that you were different from other children?
Tina: From a very early age, I knew something about me was different. I couldn’t have explained it at the time, and I certainly didn’t have the words for it, but the feeling was there. Even as a small child, I sensed that I didn’t quite fit in the way other children seemed to. Over the next few years, I found myself quietly trying to make sense of those feelings, turning them over in my mind without really understanding what they meant.
When I was four years old, we moved out of the old house in Old Basford to a place about three miles away, the home I still live in today, more than fifty years later. Not long after that, I started school, first at Robin Hood Infants and then the juniors. On the outside, life carried on as normal, but inside, something was growing. The feelings I had weren’t fading, they were getting stronger, like a small presence inside me that slowly but steadily demanded attention.
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| Tina in 2020. |
Tina: Money was still tight in those days, so you learned to make your own entertainment. I spent hours creating rag dollies from scraps of fabric that cost next to nothing, or making pom-poms from old bits of knitting wool. Those simple activities gave me comfort and focus, and looking back, they were probably my first safe spaces.
Before long, another part of me began to emerge, my love for art. I discovered that I could draw and sketch to a very high standard for my age. That passion grew into working with watercolours and eventually oil paints. I won several art competitions at school, and for the first time, I felt like I had found something that truly belonged to me. Even though I was quite a loner and didn’t mix much with other pupils, art gave me a sense of identity and purpose.
Monika: Were there moments that felt especially affirming or joyful during that time?
Tina: My way of seeing myself and the world didn’t match most people’s expectations, and I knew that. One of my happiest memories from that time was when my cousin Sandra came to visit. We would play for hours, pretending to be hairdressers and doing each other’s hair. Those moments felt natural and joyful, even though I didn’t yet understand why they meant so much to me.
As I grew older, things became more complicated. My shyness made everything harder, and I began to struggle more deeply with questions about myself, especially around sexuality. I didn’t understand what I was feeling, only that I clearly wasn’t like the other boys around me. It all felt overwhelming and confusing. Not being able to talk to anyone about it, not having the language or the support, was incredibly frustrating. Even then, it was obvious to me that I wasn’t a “normal young man” in the way society defined it. I just didn’t know why yet. All I knew was that something fundamental inside me was asking to be understood, and for a long time, I had no idea how to answer it.
Monika: As you grew older, those feelings you’ve described didn’t fade.
Tina: For several years, I was battling a constant inner turmoil, and it was starting to affect me deeply. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I had no idea how to even begin dealing with it. Whatever this thing was inside me, it felt like it had taken over my life, and I didn’t yet have a name for it.
By the time I was around nine years old, my interest in female clothing began to surface. I found myself rummaging through my mother’s clothes, feeling an overwhelming urge to try them on. At the same time, I was painfully aware that I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. I knew it was considered “wrong,” and that knowledge filled me with guilt and fear. But the feelings were simply too strong to ignore. Little by little, the need grew, and whenever I had the opportunity, I took it.
Monika: How did you manage those urges while living with that fear and guilt?
Tina: Eventually, I reached a point where I knew I needed to have things of my own. I began buying small items of clothing and feminine belongings with the pocket money my parents gave me. Each piece was chosen carefully and then hidden away with even greater care. I would only take them out when I was completely alone, treasuring those rare moments when I could briefly feel like myself. By this time, I was in the later years of secondary school, and something unexpected happened. Another talent emerged, my love of amateur dramatics. I was quickly noticed at school and selected to join a small group of pupils chosen for a special drama programme.
Monika: Did performing change the way you felt about yourself?
Tina: The productions we staged were huge by school standards. They were performed in the main hall in front of audiences of around a thousand people each night and ran for two weeks at a time. For me, it was a turning point. Drama gave me an excuse to wear wigs, makeup, and female clothing in plain sight, and no one questioned my motives. No suspicions were raised at all. I absolutely loved it. Being able to present myself that way, even within the context of a performance, gave me a sense of relief and freedom I hadn’t felt before. It helped me more than I can really put into words, because for once, I didn’t have to hide completely.
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| Her favourite photo. |
On top of that, the school held regular dance and music nights on Thursday evenings in the hall. Those events added to the feeling that, through creativity and performance, I had found small, socially acceptable ways to express parts of myself that otherwise had nowhere to go. Looking back now, I can see how important those outlets were. They didn’t solve the confusion or the pain, but they gave me moments of breathing space in a world where I otherwise felt trapped inside myself.
Monika: Soon you had your first serious relationships.
Tina: When I was about fifteen, I met a girl named Diana. I had noticed her several times before; she had this confidence and presence that really stood out to me. After weeks of working up the courage, I finally approached her, and to my surprise, we connected almost instantly. She was fourteen, but she carried herself with a maturity that drew me in. That relationship became my first real emotional attachment. We spent hours talking, laughing, and discovering who we were as young teenagers.
Looking back, I can see that I was also beginning to explore parts of my identity that I didn’t yet have the language for. I found myself wanting to buy her clothes and little feminine things, not just as gifts, but because, in a way, I was projecting my own sense of self onto her. I didn’t understand it then, but I was shaping her into a reflection of something I longed for in myself.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Tina Marie Phillips.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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